Lane e-mailed me to ask how to get the pooch used to the idea of tooth-brushing. Actually, we want them to accept the actual practice of tooth-brushing in addition to the idea of it [joke: observe the twinkle in my eye, please]. Lane’s second question was about the type of toothbrush you need. Why not just buy the best toothbrush you can get for a dollar? I mean, it’s for the dog! We’re talking about animals who are not exactly particular what they put in their mouths, after all. So, here’s my opinion on the matter:

We sell the C.E.T. double-ended toothbrush for under five dollars. This brush has a large head on one end and a small one on the other. The heads have tapered tips and are angled from the shaft. The shafts are slightly flexible, and most importantly, the bristles are very soft, almost as soft as a make-up brush. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, we don’t want the brushing to be ucomfortable. Secondly, the most important area to clean is the gingival sulcus, the small recess under the gum margin that is not attached to the tooth. This is one to two millimeters deep. Dogs and cats rarely develop cavities, but gum disease is rampant. The plaque (which turns into tartar by mineralizing) develops not only on the crown of the tooth where you can see it, but more importantly, in that area UNDER the gum-line, and this is what produces disease. A cheap toothbrush is unlikely to have the softness and flexibility to reach this most important area under the gumline.

To get your pet used to the idea of toothbrushing, start by simply working your finger over the teeth, possibly with some tasty substance involved. Many pets like the taste of garlic powder. Just don’t use something so tasty that your finger gets eaten along with the ketchup. Progress gradually to using the toothbrush, following with food rewards if you need to, at first.

Human toothpaste is full of foaming agents, which most pets hate, so I’d not recommend it. As in people, you can use baking soda. C.E.T. toothpaste has no foaming agents, includes special plaque-fighting enzymes (at least they say it does, for what that’s worth), and comes in mint,beef, seafood and poultry flavors (”tastes like chicken”). That’s what we sell. I like the vanilla-mint, myself.

If you get discouraged, or lazy (like me), then just pay attention to the teeth and have them professionally cleaned before the gums recede and expose tooth roots. Once that happens, you have lost the normal architecture and the mouth will never really be healthy again.

It is really quite amazing how a healthy mouth prolongs the animal’s quality of life.

This post was provided by Dr. Everett Mobley of Kennet Veterinary Clinic in Kennet, MO.

Today we performed dental cleaning on a couple of 10-years old German Shepherds. The tartar on their teeth was pretty thick. One of them lost a molar. The tartar had eroded its attachment to the gums, and it was pretty much falling out, despite being free of cavities. When I go to the dentist, the hygienist often remarks on how much tartar I have, despite the fact that it is invisible to me. I wonder what they would say if I went in like these dogs with tartar 2mm thick.

Dental calculus (”tartar”) is what you get when plaque forms on the teeth and mineralizes. It’s the brown junk around the gum-line (or all over the tooth, if you just let it go untreated). The stuff you can see makes for an ugly smile, but it’s the tartar up underneath the gum-line that causes your pet to lose teeth. It is half bacteria by weight, and the bacterial growth and by-products have a bad odor: “the germs that cause bad breath”, as the mouthwash ads say. Aside from an ugly smile and bad breath, it seeds bacteria into the bloodstream on a constant basis. Where do they end up? In the body’s filters, the kidneys.

Over the years, having a cruddy mouth causes you to lose some of your kidney function prematurely. Since you start out with four times as much kidney function as you need, this doesn’t bother you much early on. On the other hand, if you lose some kidney function to other diseases, you’ll wish you had some more to spare. It’s no coincidence that kidney failure is one of the most common causes of death in elderly pets.

Daily brushing is the best way to prevent it, but not many pet-owners practice it. Hard chew-biscuits help only about one out of ten dogs to prevent tartar build-up. Rawhide chews do better, helping fifty percent of dogs. Hard chew-toys like Nylabones help up to seventy percent of dogs, IF they will chew on them. Daily brushing with a soft toothbrush is the best.

Once the tartar is there, cleaning requires anesthesia. Think how irritating it is when you have two hands wielding tools in your mouth, and it’s not hard to see why dogs and cats wouldn’t sit still for it. Fortunately, modern anesthesia carries few risks in these procedures, especially with modern monitoring equipment.

Dr. Jan Bellows is a veterinarian in Florida who is one of the premier dental specialists for animals. His website is well worth checking out.

This post was provided by Dr. Everett Mobley of Kennet Veterinary Clinic in Kennet, MO.